


whatever it takes

by Areiton



Series: Tony Stark Bingo [10]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Dark Peter Parker, Dark fic, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Multiverse, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), implied Sam Wilson/James "Bucky" Barnes - Freeform, questionable morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 09:13:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: When things are quiet and calm and empty, his mind turns where it always does—to Tony. To the gaping hole where he should be.And to the little thorn of knowledge.He takes a shuddering breath, and goes to the workshop.Tony Stark Bingo: K2 Accidental Villainy





	whatever it takes

For a while, the world is too insane for him to think about it. It’s _there_ , digging like a thorn in the back of his mind, but there’s Europe and MJ and fucking Mysterio and his bullshit to sort through, and then—when the dust settles and he’s on the quinnjet home with Happy and Ned, when he’s talked to MJ about why this isn’t going to work out, when he’s _home_ and has given Morgan and May and Pepper hugs and explanations, when he’s tucked Morgan into bed and spent most of the night watching her sleep—

When things are quiet and calm and empty, his mind turns where it always does—to Tony. To the gaping hole where he should be.

And to the little thorn of knowledge.

He takes a shuddering breath, and goes to the workshop.

~*~

He doesn’t tell anyone.

That makes it harder—but he isn’t stupid, know damn well that Fury would shut him down. Pepper would look at him with those big, tragic eyes and tell him this isn’t what Tony wanted. May would worry—they’d _all_ worry, wrap him in her arms, suffocating, and he can’t handle that, can’t handle anything but the work.

He doesn’t tell anyone, and he thinks that probably means something. Probably means he _knows_ what he’s doing is wrong. He doesn’t care, is the thing.

Mr. Stark deserved to live. He deserved his family and peace and _rest._ He saved the world and he should have _lived._

And Peter is going to fix it.

~*~

It takes him almost a year to get it right, to work out the physics and magic and tech to open a door to the multiverse.

May worries. He knows she does, sees it in her eyes, when he bothers to go home. He doesn’t, much—it’s easier to stay in the workshop, pass out on the couch and let the bots cover him. There’s food and he leaves to go to classes, to patrol, before he’s right back here, working feverishly working on fixing things. It takes him almost a year, to get it right.

And then he opens a door.

~*~

Mysterio said—he _hates_ him, hates what he did to them, in Europe, hates that for a few breathless moments, while Beck kissed him, he’d forgotten the numbing pain of losing Tony—that it was a gamble. That you couldn’t ever tell, what world you’d open up into.

It’s one of the reasons why the multiverse was so dangerous.

Peter gambled.

~*~

When you open a door—it opens both ways.

He could go through—but other things could come _in._

Peter thinks, as he fights a giant fucking squid oozing through the Upper East Side alongside Rhodey, this is worth it.

Opening doors, exploring the other worlds—it’s worth it.

~*~

Sometimes, nothing comes through. Sometimes, he slips into the other world and he finds Tony.

It always breaks his heart.

Because there is a Tony Stark for every world and some he’s dead, and some he’s still making weapons, his hands soaked in blood. He is Ironman and a businessman, a mechanic in Tennessee, a single father, a lonely drunk, happily married. He is a professor and a CEO and one memorable world, the long-suffering assistant to Miss Pepper Potts, running Potts Industries while Pep slept her way through the socialites of New York.

And there are the worlds, where Tony loves Peter.

~*~

“Peter,” May says, gently. “You should get out of the lab.”

“I’m working,” he says.

“Morgan misses you,” Pepper tells him.

It’s not a recrimination—but it stings. Because, “I’m doing this _for_ Morgan.”

They stare at him, big brown eyes and worried blue. “Doing what, sweetheart?” May asks, gently.

~*~

He’s in a world where Tony and Peter are engaged. It’s painfully similar to his own—Spiderman and Ironman, SI and all the rest. Thanos didn’t come here, and Pepper never came back to Tony after the fallout with Cap and Co.

It’s only Peter and Tony and for a moment, watching them, watching how _happy_ they are—he thinks about it.

Thinks about slipping in and taking his other self’s place.

It would be easy. Easy.

And he would be so _happy._

His fingers itch, and he takes a half-step toward his other self—and then his thoughts catch up with him and he makes a noise, broken in the back of his throat, and bolts, swinging up and away and back to his world.

~*~

“You’re playing with fire,” Fury says. He’s in the lab, his eye sharp and cold. The bots are unnaturally still, around him, quiet and hovering behind him, almost afraid. It makes Peter irrationally angry. He’s tired and hungry and his side is still aches from getting into a fight in the last world he visited—a world ruled by Hydra, where the Winter Soldier was a revered state hero and Ironman a wanted fugitive.

“I’m shutting you down,” Fury says, abruptly, when Peter doesn’t say anything in response. “You can’t just go wandering through the multiverse, Parker—you’re tearing holes in reality.”

Peter doesn’t any anything. There isn’t anything to say, not that Fury will listen to.

“Have you even seen what you’re letting in? There were three attacks from some Godzilla looking fuckers last week, and a goddamn Winter Soldier came through the week before that—Barnes had a helluva a time fighting his own damn self.”

“I don’t care,” Peter says, stubbornly.

“You don’t _care._ Boy, you _have_ to care. You’re endangering the world you swore to protect.”

Peter smiles at that—it’s not a friendly smile. “I didn’t swear shit, Director.”

Fury makes a wordless noise of anger, takes a half step toward him—

And Peter moves.

~*~  

He leaves the body in a world that’s full of darkness and iron spiders—it disturbs him, but distantly, and he slips back into his world while the metal clatter of legs

~*~

Peter wonders, standing in the back of the debriefing, with everyone tense and worried and arguing over Fury’s disappearance—he wonders how far he will take this.

How much he will sacrifice.  

He knows the others are worried—Rhodey and Sam keep looking at him like he’s fragile, and Winter watches him with narrow, knowing eyes. Strange avoids his gaze entirely. He wonders—is there a line?

One he won’t cross to get Tony back?

Is there anyone who he wouldn’t eliminate, to get Tony back?

Peter looks at the room full of heroes, and the answer makes him shiver.

~*~

The world is dark. Peter looks at it, sometimes, from the Tower that Tony left to him, and he thinks—it’s flawed. Not quite whole. There are _holes_ in it, dark spaces where other worlds seep in.

“This world doesn’t deserve you,” he whispers. “It’s broken. It doesn’t deserve what you gave.”

Lightning cracks across the sky, bright and jagged and lighting up a world he doesn’t quite recognize.

~*~

“Please,” May murmurs. She cleans  his hands—they sting, oozing black sludge seeping into the cuts from where it clings to his suit. It’s acidic, and he thinks, idly, that it’s going to suck if a hole opens from that world.

He thinks, maybe, he should tell Sam or Rhodey—someone.

Warn them.

“Please stop, Pete. You have to see what you’re doing.”

“I’m close,” he says.

She looks at him, and her gaze is so sad it makes him ache. “You have to let him go.”

Fear and fury dance down his spine and he looks at her. “Tony wouldn’t want this,” she almost begs.

Her grip is tight, tight, tight, on his hands, holding him still, and her heartbeat is pounding in her throat. “What did you do,” he whispers.

“Peter,” she tries. He shoves her from him, bolting toward the lab.

There are three of them—T’Challa and Ant-man and Wasp, and he feels a pang of regret—his suit forms around him, and he murmurs, “Activate instakill,” a moment before he attacks.

T’Challa goes down easy, startlingly easy, and he sees surprise on Hope’s face, an instant before his electric webbing wraps around her shrinking body and she goes down, twitching and smoking. Scott—Scott is harder, and bloody and he limps away from it.

But in the end—they’re dead, and he—he isn’t. The portal is untouched. He sighs, intoxicating relief, and goes back to May.

~*~

He doesn’t understand, completely.

She’s crumpled, a cut strings doll, sprawled on the ground. Her skull is dented in on one side, blood pooling and eyes vacant and he remembers, abruptly, pushing her in his panic, her startled cry and the sound of her _hitting_ something.

He crouches next to her, and his eyes sting, familiar grief clogging his throat.

“Why’d you have to help them,” he asks. “Why’d you gotta do that, May?”

He holds her, blood soaking his knees and his suit and turning his fingers sticky and thick.

~*~

He's tired. He slips in and out of worlds, but none are _right_ , none are _his_ Tony and he is so tired. Sometimes, he wonders if they're right--if he _can't_ do it.

If he should let go, move on.

He does--for three nights, he lets the portal lie closed and dark, chases demons down alleyways and rescues innocents.

And it cuts, deep and insistent, under his skin. The need to go looking. The need to _find_ Tony. To bring him home.

He ignores it for three nights.

And then he goes back, blows the portal wide and goes looking for Tony.

~*~  

Winter watches him. "It's dangerous. What you're doing."

Peter doesn't bother dying it. He just watches Winter, as assessing as the assassin.

"Will you stop, when you find him?"

Peter nods, vigorous and earnest and Winter gives him a final look.

“I will keep them from you--but you stop. When it is done and he is home--you stop. And it never hurts Sam.”

Peter doesn’t agree--but Winter slips out, and he thinks--we all have someone we would destroy the world for.

Winter just told Peter his.

It is enough.

~*~

Once--purely by chance and accident, he stumbles upon Mysterio’s world. It gleams golden and green, and he stays there for a heartbeat, two, three--and Tony smiles at him from the mist.

He smiles, and it’s the one Peter remembers, warm and fond and inviting him to laugh at the rest of the world.

Peter aches with _want_ , the urge to go throw himself in Tony’s arms so strong it’s a physical pain.

He remembers, though--Uncle Ben smiling at him in Venice and Mysterio killing Flash.

He bolts through the portal, and hides, shaking and scared, in Tony’s empty bed for hours.

~*~

He’s in the kitchen, when he hears a small gasp. A broken little noise that makes him twist around, a piece of toast dangling from his fingers.

Tony is standing in the doorway. He is pale and his eyes are wide, and his hands shake as he stumbles forward a step. “Pete,” he whispers, and that tone.

Peter _knows_ that tone, knows the desperate hope and hunger in it, has heard it every time he’s whisper, _“Tony?”_ in a world that wasn’t his, to a Tony that wasn’t his.

He catches Tony as he falls, holds him close, inhales the scent of him that is just like he remembers, and he kisses his hair as Tony whispers, frantic and desperate, “I found you. I found you. I found you.”

~*~

“I died,” Peter says, later. He’s fed Tony, dressed him in clothes that fit perfectly. Catalogued the minor differences--the lines around his eyes, the hand that is scarred and shaking, the gray at his temples and scars on his arms, when he shoves his sleeves up. “Didn’t I?”

Tony nods, helpless. Still staring at Peter like he’s seeing a ghost, or maybe just something precious that he’d given up all but the wildest of hopes of ever seeing again.

“How long?” Peter asks.

“Six years,” Tony rasps.

Peter closes his eyes. He can’t even imagine that. It’s been eighteen months since his Tony died on that battle field--and every moment has felt like an unending agony.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmurs and Tony is suddenly there, kissing him, and it’s desperate, frantic and hard, biting and rough and demanding, almost _begging_ Peter to be real, to be _his_ , and Peter--Peter sighs and yields, and gives him what he’s always wanted to give Tony Stark.

Everything.

~*~

Tony stands naked at the window, after, staring at the city, sprawled below. Peter watches him, his body delightfully sore and spent and sticky. “You didn’t do as much damage to your world,” Tony says, softly. “Did you have to eliminate anyone?”

Peter briefly wonders who Tony killed, to keep searching for him. He nods and doesn’t ask. Some things are better not discussed, he thinks.

“Do you want to stay?” Tony asks.

Peter thinks of the worlds he’s seen. The ones of fire and acid and ironspiders, the one where Winter ruled and the one where a blue eyed Tony laughed at him and called him pet.

He thinks of the one where Ironman and Spider-man were not needed, where peace was real and not a fleeting dream.

He thinks of everything he’s ever wanted and how very tired he is.

“I want to be with you,” he says, because peace is enticing--but he has killed for this man. He has torn universes apart, for him.

Tony smiles and it feels like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> Peter makes a lot of really bad, morally questionable decisions in his single-minded desire to bring Tony back. And maybe sorta kills a few folks.


End file.
